Global capitalism is in a state of renewed chaos several years after the global financial crisis that wreaked havoc on the peoples of the world. Many consequences of that crisis are still very much with us, as the global capitalists, led by the U.S., have been unable to end it. What we are witnessing are not residues of the crisis, but renewed chaos erected on the ruins of the 2008 capitalist debacle.
A few examples demonstrate the point: The European Union (EU) has recently experienced serious economic tremors in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy and the U.K., and an economic earthquake in Greece. The Brexit vote has renewed the economic and political instability in the EU and U.K. and certainly compounded the political havoc caused by Turkey, when it opened up the floodgates to the refugees from West Asia and Africa to enter the EU. In the last decade U.S. real GDP per capita grew at a rate of 0.44 percent, a far cry from the long run average of 2 percent. In the first quarter of 2016 the economy grew at a rate of 0.8 percent. The gap between the rich and poor has widened in the U.S. over the past several decades under both Republican and Democratic administrations and Congresses.
Challenge to U.S. Domination
The culprit in all this cumulative chaos is the global capitalist class, led by major U.S. financial institutions and the transnational corporations. The introduction of the electronic microchip into production has led to the displacement of workers by automated machines, the ongoing lowering of wages, rising unemployment and the resulting poverty, homelessness, and the rise of contingent workers. The system of private property has proven its incompatibility with a global economy based on the microchip.
The problem is compounded by U.S. unilateral domination of global capitalism. It controls world financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The U.S. dollar functions as the dominant international trade currency, putting the U.S. in control of all international financial transactions. After the dissolution of the USSR, rumblings within the EU against U.S. dominance in global capitalism appeared, especially in Germany. The U.S., however, squelched that motion, and the EU has remained subservient to the U.S. Today this fact still holds true.
However, the international polarization is also clear. As the developing nations are compelled to adopt electronic production, that contradiction becomes intense and dangerous. Protecting their market is a matter of life and death for these regions. On the other hand, the U.S. must have these markets, and wants to see these regions become richer, so they can become consumers of U.S. commodities. To increase consumers they must also increase producers, who cannot only buy, but who can produce goods for sale in other markets. The emergence of trade blocs, especially the BRICS, and the economic power of China and of Russia, are both an expression of and an objective challenge to the dominance of the U.S. This only increases the danger of war.
The unfolding of real events shows us this developing polarization. The Russian Federation soundly defeated the two wars in Chechnya that the U.S. and Saudis concocted, as well as the 2008 U.S. machinations in Georgia. The Russian Federation could no longer tolerate U.S. aggression by proxy, or its continual moves to expand NATO to the east. Parenthetically, the U.S. has also used NATO to keep Europe in check and thus maintain its influence over it. The recent major U.S. machinations in Ukraine are clearly designed to weaken the Russian Federation and penetrate it militarily, economically, and through “civil society” organizations. Equally important for the U.S. was its attempt to dominate the Middle East and erase Russian influence from that region, and thereby isolate China from its Russian ally. While the Russians were unable to stop the U.S. war on Iraq in 1991, and the country’s occupation in 2003, they are succeeding in countering U.S. geopolitical strategy, beginning in Syria.
U.S. Geopolitical Strategy
The U.S. has a multi-pronged strategy to defeat the Russian Federation and China. The main elements of the strategy are: Surrounding the Russian Federation through NATO in Europe and implementing sanctions to deter Russia’s “meddling” in Ukraine by annexing the Crimean Peninsula. The U.S. is utilizing armies such as al-Qa‘eda and Da‘esh (ISIS), financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These are supported logistically by Turkey and Jordan, and supported by military operations centers in both countries with command and control from U.S., British, Saudi, Turkish, and Israeli intelligence services. By redrawing the Middle East map and creating “micro states” based on sectarian and ethnic divisions, which serve U.S. strategic interests they seek to do away with Russian, Chinese, and Iranian regional influence.
The U.S. engineered a precipitous decline in the price of oil through Saudi manipulation of its production as a measure to weaken the Russian, Iranian and Venezuelan economies, all of which depend heavily on exporting oil. It is reorganizing its “backyard” in Latin America to recoup significant losses it has sustained. It got rid of the Argentinian regime and Brazilian president Dilma Rouseff and supported the right-wing opposition in Venezuela.
Domination of the Middle East would allow the U.S. to achieve several strategic goals. The U.S. would be able to encircle the Russian Federation and China through NATO. (NATO is in Afghanistan, which borders China.) It could dismantle the Syrian and Iranian states with the help of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel, and could defeat the anti-Zionist resistance in Lebanon and Palestine. It could keep the EU in line by controlling the energy sources in the region, including those that have been recently discovered in the Mediterranean, and deny Middle Eastern oil and gas sources to its main rivals. It controls Yemen through Saudi Arabia. It could keep Israel the regional top dog.
The U.S. plan seeks world domination. This fact is further corroborated by the U.S. machinations in Africa and the Far East. The U.S. has engineered the division of the Sudan (a civil war is likely in Southern Sudan) and destroyed Libya, driving both the Russians and the Chinese out, leaving the stage for U.S., British, and French oil corporations. The French military is currently fighting in Mali, and contemplating merging southern Libya with Mali so the West could exploit natural resources in both countries. In Libya, Algeria and Tunisia, al-Qa‘eda and Da’esh, financed by Arabian money, have become more active. In Ethiopia, the construction of the Nahda Dam will deny Egypt its share of the Nile waters, a possible cause of war between Ethiopia and Egypt, which is battling Da‘esh in the Sinai. With the blessing of the U.S., Israel is active in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Southern Sudan, and Uganda. The thrust of all of those developments means that the U.S. is attempting to deny China Africa’s resources.
During his visit to Vietnam in May 2016 President Obama declared that both the U.S. and Vietnam had to band together in the face of China. Earlier, U.S. Defense Secretary Ashton Carter proposed that a coalition of Far Eastern countries should form to contain China and the Russian Federation.
Fascism and War
War is inevitable under capitalism. It is objective. It is not a matter of someone coming up with the idea, or making a choice. War becomes so entangled as an instrument of policy, that if the policy is going to be put forward, war becomes the inevitable means of developing and implementing that policy.
The drive for war has been historically much more pronounced under fascism. U.S. fascism is more sophisticated than Italy’s or Germany’s in WWII, and has more human, financial and natural resources to incinerate on the altar of private profit. This is the danger that humanity faces.
Increasingly, fascist movements have been developing in Europe. The more developed movements are in France, Greece and Germany, followed by Sweden, Britain, and the Eastern European states, such as Poland, Hungary, and the Ukraine. Those developments are occurring simultaneously as manifestations of the global capitalist crisis in the age of the electronics revolution.
The merger of the corporations and the State is creating the basis for political fascism in America. Draconian laws limit bourgeois freedoms and liberties, using the world conditions that the U.S. capitalists have created to justify these restrictions. Clearly those actions reveal the U.S. attacks on the people’s movements to squelch social awareness and public protest against corporate interests, that challenge the drive towards war. The shootings of civilians – predominantly youth – by police only show the rotten core of the rule of the capitalist class, represented by both political parties. The conviction of Reverend Edward Pinkney for voter fraud in Benton Harbor, Michigan, despite the fact that no evidence of wrong doing was presented, shows how the State is moving to attack anyone who stands in the way of corporate domination.
The ruling class is rapidly developing a mass base for fascism. All kinds of workers are being drawn to the banner of fascism, without even realizing what it will mean for them and their families. They have been socialized around the color factor and the myth of American Exceptionalism. The ruling class is preparing the American people for war. U.S. fascism would be best served globally under Clinton, who would be equally as dangerous as Trump. She is in the forefront of the movement to implement the U.S. geopolitical strategy we have described.
However, despite all of the brain-washing, many have stepped forward to fight against the onslaught of the fascist State and its gathering political movement. We also see an embryonic class awareness emerging from these struggles.
On the electoral level this motion manifested itself in the Sanders’ campaign. His pledge to support Clinton does not diminish the impact that his message has on millions of people. A section of the working class used his campaign as a vehicle to fight for its concrete demands that the government provide answers to their deteriorating social and economic situation.
These rising movements are coalescing on every front – against police brutality, against Emergency Managers, against environmental degradation, against homelessness, to name but a few – and are all objectively demanding a different, a better world, where all are provided for. They form the beginnings of a revolutionary movement based on the program of the emerging new proletarian class. This is the indispensable ingredient in the global struggle against war and fascism to rid the earth of private property relations.
September/October 2016 Vol26.Ed5
This article originated in Rally, Comrades!
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